Sunday 10 September 2023 – As you will have read (you will have, won’t you? Good!), we arrived here yesterday. Walking through the city to our hotel gave us a chance at some of the sights. Since our hotel room was available and a Nice Lunch was forthcoming there, we needed a walk afterwards, and we also went out during the evening to see if any of the sights looked nice lit up. Today we took another walk around, so we’ve covered a few miles and seen quite a lot of what the city has to offer, It’s-a nice-a place – the centre is very handsome and has such a cosmopolitan feel that I actually found it difficult on occasions to remember that I was in Spain.
This post is going to be mainly just a selection of the photos I took, and most of them are of the many religious buildings that litter the place. If you’re content with that, please read on….
The City
León has a long history, having been founded as the military encampment of the Roman Legio VI Victrix around 29 BC. So the city’s name comes from the latin for Legion, and not from Lion, although you’d never guess from the number of Lion statues around the place
The lion has also been adopted as a local emblem for the Camino
though this is apparently not popular and I’ve heard some of these signs even feature bullet holes. I’m not surprised; it’s a rubbish idea, and demeans the Camino, the animal and the City all at once.
In 1188, the city hosted the first Parliament in European history under the reign of Alfonso IX, and this is why it was acknowledged as the “cradle of Parliamentarism”. Now, the Icelanders might have a thing or two to say about that, since the Althingi, established in 930 AD, is often regarded as the world’s oldest extant parliamentary institution. However, it’s essential to note that it was a very different kind of assembly from modern parliaments, being an outdoor gathering of chieftains, rather than a systematic process of representation from local burghers as well as noblemen and clergy. The city’s prominence began to decline in the early Middle Ages, partly due to the loss of independence after the union of the Leonese kingdom with the Crown of Castile, consolidated in 1301. This still rankles with the locals; all over the place you can find signposts where the “Castilla y” part of “Castilla y León” has been black spray painted over. The signpost above is one of the few I saw where this had not happened.
After a period of stagnation during the early modern age, it was one of the first cities to hold an uprising in the Spanish War of Independence, and some years later, in 1833, acquired the status of provincial capital. This chequered but consequential history goes a long way to explain why it is such an important city.
Religious buildings
Apart from the cathedral, there are many churches and other religious buildings across the city. Our hotel, the Hotel Real Colegiata San Isidoro, is part of the fabric of the Basilica of San Isidoro, which has a striking interior.
and also features a museum. I took some unofficial photos in the museum.
Some of the books date from the 16th century
In the Pantheon part, they actually police the prohibition of taking photos, so I was reduced to buying a couple showing the Pantheon and some of the mural painting that has survived nearly a thousand years.
The Basilica has some lovely cloisters.
Somewhat away from the old town is the Convento de San Marcos, which has a splendid portico
and much of which is now a parador hotel (featured in the “The Way” film, apparently.
And of course, there is the cathedral.
In the 100 years after the Moors were defeated, 200 Christian cathedrals were built over Iberia. The three largest are Toledo, Burgos and, yes, León. It gives less of its interior over to the vast number of chapels that there are in the Burgos cathedral, so the inside space feels much larger.
It’s difficult to realise from the outside, but inside is one of the largest arrays of stained glass anywhere.
The choir is exquisitely carved.
The stained glass is so famous that people even use it as a garage door decoration.
The cathedral also has very grand cloisters.
There are, of course, other churches, such as the Iglesia de Santa María del Camino o del Mercado, on Plaza del Grano.
Thinking of which, there are lots of plazas, such as del Grano,
several smaller ones, inevitably with a selection of bars and restaurants,
the main one, of course, being the Plaza Mayor.
The plazas tend to feature buildings with cloisters or galleries under building overhangs,
All around the place you find statuary
The above is on a plaza outside a building designed by the famous Antoni Gaudi, whose buildings contribute to the unique feel of Barcelona. This one, by comparison is somewhat muted,
but still features an extravagant entrance.
There are other lovely architectural settings, too numerous to articulate in full.
but the tout ensemble makes the old town a very pleasant place to wander about. As we did so, it was nice to bump into some of our “Camino Family” – Molly and Mike from Minnesota, and Petra and Tom from Kõln. In the evenings, some places are lit up. This makes the cathedral even more impressive, for example.
and the shopping streets, which feature innumerable bars and restaurants, have a wonderful buzz about them.
Mind you, occasionally things take a slightly more rowdy turn, such as when we came across this bachelor party celebration in one of those plazas.
León has provided a wonderful break from walking the Camino, but we have to get back on it tomorrow. We will retrace our steps to the convent and cross the Roman San Marcos bridge
as we make our way towards Villar del Mazerife, about 23km away – a medium-distance walk which we hope will get us back into the swing of progressing along The Way. We’re hoping for decent weather, of course, as we start this next segment of the Camino. Do please keep in touch so you can find out how it all works out, eh?
Saturday 9 September 2023 – After all the exuberant shenanigans in Mansilla during yesterday evening, I expected the night to be a noisy one. In the end, the only thing disturbing utter quiet was the sound of thunder, so we had an undisturbed night. The forecast was for rain to fade away by 8am, leaving a warm day, so we timed our departure accordingly. The hotel’s rather patchy service level extended to breakfast which was only available over the road and only after 8am, so we quietly ate yoghurt and bananas that we’d bought, imbibed a mug of Twining’s finest Earl Grey and slipped out onto the Camino at 0730.
As we crossed the Roman bridge past the old city walls, the weather looked somewhat ominous,
and some pilgrims in front of us stopped to put on rain gear; I decided to put my confidence in Accuweather and refrained. Once again, we got some lovely light, courtesy of clouds and the rising sun
but basically the clouds cleared and we escaped any further rain, although we could see lightning ahead of us and thunder occasionally rolled around us.
The path ahead looked very similar to what we walked into Mansilla the previous day,
i.e. a track beside the road; I expected this to be our lot all the way for the 19 or so kilometres to León. There was some variation, though. After a few kilometres, informal signage promised us a bar off to the left, and so we headed that way into a village called Villamoros. There was a church
and, indeed, a bar – which was closed, despite a sign on the door saying it opened at 0730. Sighing, we moved on from Villa Morose and got back on the track.
Fortunately there was a bar open a couple of kilometres further on, so we stopped for a coffee and pastry to supplement what we’d eaten earlier. Shortly after moving on, we crossed a bridge
that makes life a bit easier for pilgrims, as originally, it seems that people were expected to ford the stream below. As we left this modern bridge we were confronted with a much older and more impressive one.
This is a Roman bridge which I think has as many as 20 arches, although it’s not possible to see them all; anyway, it’s an impressive piece of work, and further tribute to the quality of Roman construction.
The main Camino then carries on alongside the road for a few more kilometres, but the Google map we had courtesy of WalkTheCamino.com showed an alternative which was slightly longer but which took us away from the road.
The going was largely fine, although it required some careful puddle slaloming and the occasional well-judged leap. We were glad, though to get away from the trail of pilgrims on the main drag; although it couldn’t be called crowded, there were enough other people to encourage us to seek quiet and solitude – which we found with the exception of one other pilgrim, from Switzerland. He stopped to ask us what what was going on when he saw me apparently videoing an electricity pylon. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? This is what I was videoing.
Jane had spotted what was going on, and it was a pleasure to spend a few minutes watching the antics of these little chaps. I also spotted a bigger electricity pylon which I reckon has the face of a cat,
and we saw storks’ nests on other pylons, including one with both penthouse and mezzanine dwellings.
I reckon flying into the lower one of those requires a well-calculated approach path.
We eventually re-joined the main Camino track, which by this stage had also diverged from the road
and followed it past the village of Arcahueja, and past a rather nice pilgrims rest area
which featured a couple of water fountains, one of which had an amusing disclaimer on it.
We didn’t need any water anyway, and as it happens we were approaching a refreshment stop so moved on after I’d applied a bit of sun block, since the sun was now out and hot. The refreshment stop was in Valdelafuente, just a couple of kilometres further on, somewhere clearly beginning to be within the León industrial catchment area.
There were a couple of bars
and so we stopped for a coffee. On the left of the picture above, you can see the edge of a garden which featured some lovely colour
and the lady whose house it was was there, so Jane stopped to compliment her on the display, which I think she rather appreciated.
After our usual coffee/OJ/beer injection, the route was clearly nearing the city; we could soon see its sprawl
and, after a little more walking, could see the cathedral in the distance, too.
The rest of the walk in was, rather like Burgos, a bit of a fag, trawling through the suburbs which were pretty much like city outskirts everywhere, with the odd occasional sight worth a photo,
and then we were into the Old Town, which is very handsome and photogenic, and has some streets with a nice atmosphere.
I’m going to end the narrative here, because there’s so, so much to see in León that I would like to dedicate a separate entry for our sightseeing, and just say that we reached our rather nice hotel,
and were able to collapse, with a relieved sigh, into a comfortable, air-conditioned room with a couple of hours free to decompress before taking lunch. And a Very Nice Lunch it was, too – a Proper Lunch, indeed. We needed some exercise after it and so we went for a walk. Obviously. That walk, and all the things we saw today and will see tomorrow, will feature in an swpics Special Entry on Sightseeing In León.
I leave you with some stats. Our total kilometrage is now 476.9, a mileage of just over 296. Since Burgos, and the start of the Meseta, we have covered 193km – 120miles.
The Meseta, often talked about as the “mental” third of the Camino Francés, has not been dull, and we haven’t found it mentally challenging. It was very different from the first section – no really large towns, many small, very quiet villages, and a landscape dominated by large-scale agriculture – so very interesting to observe as we walked through it. But I have to say that it was wonderful to arrive at this luxurious accommodation, knowing we don’t have to walk tomorrow. A couple of places in the Meseta were nice to stay in – Emebed Posada in Castrojeriz and Casa El Cura in Calzadilla de los Hermanillos top the list – but the norm was for basic levels of service. That’s not a complaint or a criticism – I can’t imagine that there is a credible business model for a four-star hotel in the middle of the Meseta. It’s simply the way that things work there, and coming into big city levels of accommodation and service amplifies the contrast.
Weather permitting, we’ll be out and about in León tomorrow and I hope we’ll get some (more) great photos from the experience. Do check in and see how it all went, won’t you?
Friday 8 September 2023 – Yesterday and today’s walks have largely been along another section of Roman road, so I have collapsed them into a single entry. Apart from anything else, it has given you a rest day, just like the one we have in plan for the day after tomorrow. I hope you’re grateful for that. If you’d like a summary of the route with some photos, you can see a Relive video that covers both days. It’ll take three minutes out of your life, but you might consider that a worthwhile investment of your time.
So: yesterday (Thursday 7th). The Hostal La Codorniz gave us a reasonably comfortable night, for all its other shortcomings. The room design was spectacularly poor. For example:
The only free electrical socket was placed just above and in the middle of the bed head – hardly the ideal place to plug in, say, a fan to keep the room cool during the night.
We had to move the room’s chair to be in front of the door to get it out of the way of any nocturnal peregrinations loo-wards.
I hope you get the picture. But we slept OK and there was a typical Meseta breakfast for us at 7am. It’s slightly odd that everywhere in Spain has provided yoghurt for breakfast except in the Meseta region. No matter – toast and/or croissant, in combination with Twining’s finest Earl Grey, courtesy of our diminishing stock, set us up for a short day’s walk. All we had to do was to get some 13km up the road to a(nother) small place called Calzadilla de los Hermanillos.
After leaving Sahagún on modern roads, our route took us on a right fork for the last two-thirds of the day’s walking; where the main route carries straight on, we join another Roman road – the longest stretch of Roman road in Spain, apparently.
First, though, as we walked out of the town, we passed (yet) another mural
and crossed a bridge
(see what I did there?) and passed yet another estimate of how much further we had to go; this one looks a little informal, if I’m honest.
We reached the fork in the road, with signs pointing us along our route, via Calzada del Coto,
supplemented by some extra (and informal) advertising of the facilities along the route, which constituted encouragement for us, as we’d planned a coffee stop in Calzada de Coto.
Very shortly we reached the village, which seemed nice enough,
but which was totally shut.
Bugger.
Nothing for it, then, but to carry on, I suppose, although it would have been possible to cut back to the other route if we’d wanted to.
However, the idea of walking a long stretch of Roman road rather than toiling alongside the bloody N-120 for even more kilometres was appealing. Also, that was the only way of reaching our accommodation for the night, as planned for us by WalkTheCamino.com.
This route dates from the time of the Emperor Trajan, who was Office i/c Roman Empire from 98 to 117. Obviously decadence had set in to the empire at that point as the builders couldn’t be bothered to make it straight, like Roman roads ought to be. Also, there was the small matter of a railway to cross,
which I think caused a bit of a deviation from the original.
The scenery for a large part of the walk was slightly odd,
with trees dotted at random intervals. We discovered (i.e Jane worked out) that these were Holm Oak trees
when their denisity increased enough for us to get near them.
The surface was level enough, but somewhat stony, so one had to pay some attention to where one put one’s feet. Frankly, it would have been easier if we could have ridden rather than walked; but there were no Trajan horses available, so Shanks’s pony it was.
The scenery, as I’ve said, was rather different from what we’d seen before in the Meseta – no wide open spaces featuring the duoculture of cereals and sunflowers. Frankly, you couldn’t have fitted it among the trees.
until we neared Calzadilla, at which point we got bloody sunflowers again
but interestingly with some kind of irrigation system installed, which we’d not noticed anywhere else for sunflowers before.
There were other crops, too – olives and almonds
maize and – christmas trees???
We arrived in Calzadilla
only about three hours after we set out, not too long after 11am. We walked through the town towards our hotel, noting that most of the buildings were, if not modern, then at least not old.
Albergue Municipal
with one or two exceptions.
The Ermita Nuestra Señora de los Dolores
When we reached our hotel, Casa El Cura,
we realised that it, like most of the village, was shut. Check-in was 1400, giving us some three hours to fill, which made us feel a little bit grumpy. We wandered around looking for a bar for some coffee, and ended up right back at our original entry point into the village, at the Albergue Via Trajana, which at least had an “Open” sign on it, even if there were no other signs of life. As it turned out, the lady managing the place was only too happy to provide coffee, OJ (Jane) and beer (me), so we passed a couple of hours there reading the papers and relaxing until it was time to get to the hotel and check in.
Casa El Cura is, we discovered, a delightful place. It was built in the 1980s by the grandparents of Gemma, the front of house, and is imbued with a sense of the (mainly agri)cultural history of the area, with historical photographs and implements used in the care and gathering of crops.
Mules drawing a threshing plate
Gemma gave us some great insights into the history of the place and why it wasn’t like so many other Spanish villages we’d passed, meaning with a selection of ancient, dilapidated and/or disued buildings among the other dwellings. It seems that many of the Calzadilla buildings had colapsed from disuse and newer buildings had replaced them, being holiday homes or houses for each of the children of a family. This contributes to the village’s air of being quite modern but still rather spookily empty. There’s a further illusion at play – there are normally plenty of pilgrims staying at the various accommodations, but one doesn’t see them out and about. Alongside Gemma at the hotel, Leo does a great job in the kitchen; he produced a splendid late and Nice Lunch for us. Pleasantly and unexpectedly we were joined at the hotel by two German pilgrims, Petra and Tom, whom we had encountered several times before but thought would have been well ahead of us on their Camino, so it was nice to catch up with them. The timing of everything worked out well, allowing us to relax for the rest of the day to gather our energies for the morrow.
Ah, yes: the morrow. Let us move now to Friday September 8 2023.
The immmediate consequence of taking the Trajan road is that it leaves one without any refreshment stop until almost the next destination – Monsilla de las Mulas.
Bottom right is Sahagún, top left is Mansilla, blue dot is Calzadilla.
Our route was pretty much devoid of any pilgrim services (e.g. coffee bars) for over three-quarters of the distance to Mansilla. One option was to cut across, back to the main drag, where the going underfoot would be better and there would be refreshment stops available along the way. That we didn’t, but instead chose to press on through the stony-tracked, coffee-bar-less wilderness of the Trajan road, shows how much the Camino can play with the balance of one’s mind. We decided that taking the Roman road was the thing to do, so, after a sort of picnic breakfast kindly provided by Gemma, off we went,
As the sun rose, it gave us some lovely light as it shone through the clouds which had provided thunder, lightning and rain during the night, which we were extremely glad to have avoided as we walked.
You will have noticed, because you’re paying attention, aren’t you?, that the road we were on seemed rather well-tarmacked for a Roman effort. And so it was, but we were still on the route of the original road, and, after the “shall we, shan’t we?” decision point
we carried on the somewhat stony, but otherwise sound path that we’d followed to reach Calazada the day before. Because there had been a lot of rain, there was a certain amount of slalom necessary to get round the puddles, but otherwise it was fine; we were very glad to have taken this option, coffee bars or none.
That said, it bore a striking resemblance to the other roman roads we’d walked, in that was flat, level and, frankly, somewhat lacking variety. Excitement came in the form of things like the chicane that the devilish road builders had clearly create to spice up the chariot races they used, I’m sure, to run on this stetch of road;
resting places, both official
and unofficial;
enormous watering arrays for the maize crops;
a railway line;
and views of the mountains which, I guess, we will eventually have to cross.
It really is rather flat,
but not uninteresting, as i’ve said before. For the final stretch of the 17km that took us into civilisation we were joined by a Dutch chap, Pascal, who, once he’d caught us up, slowed his pace a little so we could walk and talk; this passed the time agreeably until we reached the village of Reliegos
where there were bodegas
and the chance of a much-needed rest and refreshment. We accidentally stumbled across the second bar in the town, which required us to cross some major roadworks to get into it
but this turned out to be a happy accident, as we were joined by Mike and Molly from Minnesota, pilgrims we’d talked and dined with a couple of days before, and they reported that the first bar was full when they’d reached it.
Refreshment duly imbibed, we headed on towards our destnation, Mansilla de las Mulas. On the way, we noticed some actual farm animals
which were the first we’d seen in Spain – the sheep, cows and horses we’d encountered at the start of the Camino were, of course, in France.
At this point we realised that the team at WalkTheCamino.com had done us a real favour by taking us along the Roman road. As well as the satisfaction of tramping along a chunk of history, they’d spared us from some thirty kilometres of walking beside a main road.
However, now that the sun was up and the day was getting hot, having the systematic shade of the plane trees which had been planted along the roadside track now made the remaining walk into Mansilla that much more pleasant.
Soon enough we were on the outskirts of Mansilla.
We walked though the remains of one of its old gates.
They really didn’t fuck about when they made these walls really quite stout.
En route to our hotel we passed a pilgrim’s cross
and a mural
and walked the streets
past one of the churches
through a somewhat better-preserved gate
to our hotel
which was closed. On the door was a telephone number to call to bring someone to do the check-in thing. This didn’t work and so we spent really quite an unacceptable amount of time waiting for someone to come. Jane went out to search, based on a tip from a hotel resident, and of course someone turned up as soon as Jane had gone off on her quest. It’s really annoying: which part of “answer your bloody phone!” do such organisations not understand?
Anyhoo…
We got into our room, which was actually quite pleasant, and relaxed for a bit – just long enough, it transpired, such that when we went out to get something to eat, all the restaurants were closed, even the ones that Google had promsed were open. We blundered about a bit searching for an eatery or a shop which could sell us something edible. All we discovered was a town square where exceedingly loud music was blaring out amid signs that Something Was Going To Happen
and we eventually found a slightly louche bar
where we got a couple of enormous g&ts, some croquettas and a good laugh at the cabaret of the lass runing the joint telling some dodgy character to sod off and calling the police when he didn’t. We also got into a pilgrim-type chat with an American lady called Joanne, which was fun; and we further had the sense to leave before it became a Rocky Road.
Heading back to the hotel the sense that Something Was Going On was heightened, and, in the shop where we bought some essentials (e.g. milk for the Earl Grey), we found out that the town was having a festival for the weekend, hence the loud music and other bizarre things that could be seen going on around the town.
We left these Young Things to their fun and games to head back to the hotel, where we were able to make a meal out of our purchases and relax for the rest of the day.
Until…
Fireworks. And a parade. Who knows what else, but I captured a bit of video to show you the spirit of the whole thing.
Stats: Over the past two days, Relive reckons that we’ve covered a further 38.4km, so we’re up to 451.6km, or nearly 281miles. Tomorrow sees us finish the crossing of the Meseta as we arrive (all being well) in León, some 19km away. Accuweather is warning of storms and rain overnight, but the hope is that these will clear away by the time we want to leave and hold off until we arrrive in León. Once there, we have a rest day – hurrah! – which might be somewhat beset by showers – boo! We hope that we’ll still be able to do some sightseeing there, but who can tell? Check back in, won’t you, to find out?
